She snickered. “Now that you and Laura are a couple, she gets preference.”
“I’m pretty slow with the ladies, and I don’t particularly want to become an expectant father.”
Tess shrugged. “You’ll have to work it out with her. Here’s a tip, though. Virtually every woman here would pay a lot of money to be sure they would bear a great fighter.”
When I sat next to Laura again, I asked, “What are your views on the Warrior’s Kiss?”
She grinned. “I’d love a little boy, and I’m as big a fan of super kids as anyone else.” Then she looked closer at my face. “Oh, is there a problem?”
“I’m crazy about you and Christina, but I’m not ready to be a dad anytime soon. I was raised to think that a child needs both parents in a stable relationship.”
She frowned. “I’m not going to tie you to the bed and have my way with you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I was never going to understand this culture. “What I’m worried about is hurting your feelings. I want a relationship with you, but it’s too soon for a baby.”
She took my hand, and we wove magic together. She could read my true feelings, and when she finished, she said, “Fine, we’ll wait, but each time you beat a sorcerer, this question will come up. Remember that in our society, the woman runs the family.”
Just one of many things about this crazy world that I’d have to remember.
-o-o-o-
A WHILE LATER, CHRISTINA and several of her friends wandered by and congratulated me. She sat next to me and petted the cat, who was sitting on the table in front of us. He continued to eat like this was his first real meal in a long time.
The other kids gathered around, and one asked me, “Do you get to keep him? He’s so cute.”
Laura shrugged. “Ian found him. He’ll decide.”
I remembered my civic duty. “I have to contact the police to see if anyone reported a missing cat.”
So, I called the cops. It’d be better to know right away if there’d been some crazy mix-up, although the cat looked like he had been abandoned for quite a while. I didn’t want to get too attached and then have him snatched away.
A few minutes later, I knew for sure. Nobody had reported a missing teacup cat in Boulder County. I asked my new girlfriend, “How do you feel about felines?”
A half-dozen kids stared at her. Laura smirked. “Cats in a general philosophical sense, or do you have some specific cat in mind?”
A name came to me out of the blue. “Rascal, specifically.” I pointed at him.
She scrunched up her face as though she was thinking hard, although it seemed that that was mostly to impress the kids. She certainly hadn’t jumped at the opportunity to live with the cat. Christina begged her mom with imploring eyes.
“With regard to the general philosophical question,” Laura said, “I range from indifferent to mildly supportive of feline rights. With regard to that specific cat”—she nodded at Rascal—“we have no idea what kind of weirdness he’s capable of. We don’t even know if he’s potty trained. What if he likes to scratch furniture or he barfs all the time?”
This was going to be harder than I’d thought. “You have to agree he’s so adorable, he makes you want to cry.”
Christina said, “He’s so adorable.”
Laura leaned forward and looked at him closely. “I think he’s more likely a yowling tomcat, the midget version.”
He was indeed a tomcat. “We’ll get him neutered right away.”
She shook her head. “There isn’t going to be any we in this. He’ll be your cat, your hassle, and your expense.”
“Agreed.”
Laura leaned over and put her nose close to Rascal’s. “Do you throw up? That’s mostly what I care about. If he barfs, he isn’t going to spend any time in my apartment. I don’t care how much you love him or how long he’s lived with us when it starts happening.”
Christina cried out, “Mom!”
Laura faked a Southern accent. “Them’s the rules, little missy.”
Wow, she was tough. “Okay,”
“If he scratches the furniture, he goes. I don’t care how much blah, blah, blah.”
“Fine,” Christina said in the same tone of voice I’d used.
Laura scowled at me. “I don’t lift a finger, ever. You take care of his litter box, you feed him, and you vacuum the furniture every week to get rid of his hair. That’s my best and final offer.”
“Deal. Christina and I will take care of him. Rascal, say hi to your new family.”
The cat licked Christina’s hand. All of a sudden, I got an image in my head of her hand from up close. The cat was transmitting exactly what he was seeing. That’d happened before, so I wasn’t shocked, but I hadn’t connected as clearly to the black Lab.
But then Rascal licked Laura’s hand, and I looked at her face. Her eyes were twinkling.
“Damn you, Ian,” she groaned.
I smiled back. “He’s just read your feelings. You think he’s too cute for words.”
-o-o-o-
ONE BY ONE, CLAN members came by the lounge after they’d heard I’d kicked another sorcerer’s ass. They toasted me, asked for the story, and then cheered. But Crystal had her own style. She strode in, threw her arms open as though I was her long-lost lover, and planted a dramatic kiss on my lips.
“I just heard!” she said. “So brave and strong! Big men make me goofy, all soft and squishy inside. Tell me about it.”
Laura wrapped an arm around my neck. “Mine. Don’t you forget it.”
The black-haired beauty’s eyes flashed for an instant, and then she gave us a dazzlingly white smile. “Don’t get all prickly. I haven’t ravished him…yet. Can’t a girl admit to a little weakness among friends? I’m next in line, and don’t give me a hard time about it or I’ll have to bring it up with Diana. I don’t have to defend the clan, so I can raise a little Ian, no problem.”
Laura didn’t respond, which I took for acquiescence. My views apparently didn’t matter to Crystal, but I wasn’t sleeping with a manipulative ice queen. But that was a problem for another night. I gave her the three-minute version of my fight story. She gazed at me with her eyes wide open, like I’d single-handedly organized the defense of Gettysburg.
When I’d finished my story, she touched my face. “Why didn’t Laura take care of you?”
My new girlfriend giggled, and Tess growled. I rubbed the old scar on my forehead and my broken nose. “These are old boo-boos, and Laura offered to fix them, but they’re part of who I am.”
Crystal rolled her eyes. “You’re a dazzling knight in shining armor. You need to look the part.”
“Sorry. I gotta be me.”
Crystal leaned forward and squinted. “I’m not talking about turning you into a young Brad Pitt, and you weren’t born with a broken nose or a chewed-up brow.” She reached forward with her long, thin fingers, as though my nose was magnetically pulling her hand closer.
Laura snickered. “You might as well let her do it. She’s never gonna stop nagging.”
“Thanks for backing me up,” I said. Then I looked at Tess.
She shrugged. “Up to you.”
Crystal’s smile broadened. “This is the least you can do for me at the moment.” She stared at Laura. “And we’re not finished, either.”
I didn’t want to be the cause of bad blood between her and Laura. “If I say okay, you’re just going to repair the nose and the scar, right?”
“Fine, be stubborn. I wish you were all as cooperative as sweet Katie.” She smirked at some private victory.
Crystal’s fingers were long and elegant. The tips lightly brushed my nose, and warmth flowed into me, along with a strange tingling. “Mendile, transform this wound to what it was, years ago.” Then she whispered something I couldn’t hear.
My nose felt different, and when I touched it, it seemed the same as before I had broken it.
Then Crystal placed her fingertips against the scar on my forehead. This time, she didn’t bother to speak, but I felt the warmth anyway.
She leaned back in her seat. “You’re welcome. Go destroy another sorcerer soon so I can claim my prize.”
I wanted to say that I hadn’t asked for what she’d done, so no prizes would be awarded, but that would’ve been impolite. “Thank you for helping me.”
“You look marvelous.” Laura said, and she took a makeup mirror out of her purse.
I checked my nose first. Crystal had indeed fixed it. Unfortunately, it didn’t look at all the way I remembered it from before my first injury. I stared at the vamp.
“Okay, so I added an enhancement. Just a touch of Robert Redford. No one but me will notice.”
Which was bullshit, because I’d noticed right away. She’d worked quite a change. I expected my living relatives would notice just as quickly.
“Don’t even ask for a refund,” Crystal said.
I used the mirror to check the scar on my forehead, which was gone completely. As far as I could tell, Crystal hadn’t performed any extra shenanigans there.
This was an accommodation I could make without jumping into the sack with anyone, so I said, “Thank you.”
She grinned like a shark lurking underneath a seal. “You’ll repay me soon.”
Then she sashayed away.
Chapter 14
THAT TOOK ALL THE fun out of my celebration. More people came by, but I hardly heard their praise. Crystal’s comment reminded me of the people I truly owed something to, like Laura, Tess and Grandpa. He hadn’t made any specific promises to help me, but he hadn’t been able to say much over an open phone line. I knew he had to be working behind the scenes to protect the family, including me, and to get revenge on Cantor and Escobar.
Just to hear his voice, I called him and relayed the facts about the latest fight without mentioning magic.
“It sounds like you’ve found a good home,” Grandpa Samuel said. “You should learn a great deal there. I was never comfortable with how lightly your father treated self-defense, but he had his reasons.”
Grandpa had always gotten along well with Dad in the past, and they’d rarely disagreed in my presence. This was as close as Samuel had ever come to saying Dad had done something stupid.
“Tess is quite the fighter,” I replied. “Don’t worry; she takes self-defense extremely seriously.”
“Wonderful. By the way, I’ve checked further into Diana Murray. She has a remarkable reputation as a clan leader. You’re quite lucky that she’s tentatively accepted you in her community.”
Grandpa was no doubt right, but he probably didn’t understand how tyrannical she could be. “Sure, but she thinks she’s Elizabeth the First or Henry the Eighth. Treats everybody else like her slave.”
The great medicine man burst out laughing. “You should’ve known my grandfather in his day. He was a remarkable chief, but he considered everybody’s property his own, including other men’s wives and grown daughters. Thanks to help from the Great Mystery Spirit, he kept the tribe together and alive during the Dustbowl years of the Great Depression. That was a miracle, but he didn’t want to hear any bitching about how he managed the tribe.”
That wasn’t the response I’d expected. “So, he and Diana either would’ve gotten along great, or they’d have killed each other.”
“Exactly,” Grandpa replied. “If she or Tess teaches you to fight, I will chant their praises to the heavens.”
I still wasn’t convinced. “We live in twenty-first century America, not feudal Europe.”
“Osage culture hasn’t changed as much as you think since the white man came to the prairie. Neither have other magical cultures. Safety is still our most important concern.”
Grandpa had the reputation of being been a tough old fart, but he’d always been gentle with me. Maybe recent events had convinced him he’d been too easy on me for my own good.
“I’m training hard,” I said.
We continued to talk, mostly about family news, and before he hung up, he promised to visit me soon.
I stayed at the party for another hour, but by then, I was beat. Crowds had always tired me out. I slipped away unnoticed with Rascal and went back to my apartment.
-o-o-o-
Wednesday, September 11th
AT BREAKFAST, CHRISTINA POURED milk into a saucer for Rascal. He lapped it up and ate a half a slice of bacon, but he didn’t eat as voraciously as he had the day before. That seemed like a good sign.
Several kids at our table gave him different foods to see what he liked. Then Diana walked up to us with flashing eyes. I realized too late that I probably shouldn’t have been feeding Rascal on the table.
But that wasn’t the problem. “I just got word,” Diana said through gritted teeth, “that Maggie was attacked early this morning by Josef Pestone. Herman is headed to her house to collect her. Laura and Tess, can you go with him?”
They both nodded and stood.
The terrible news had made my throat burn. In a husky voice, I asked, “Can I go, too?”
“Sure,” Diana said. “But you have to leave right away. I don’t know how badly she’s been hurt.”
Christina promised to take care of Rascal for me.
Laura, Tess, and I met Herman at the barn. He’d requisitioned a large van from the parking garage and had tossed a litter into the back. The cargo area was large enough for Maggie to lie down in, if she needed to.
I sat in the back row seats with Laura. Tess sat in front next to Herman.
Tears stained my love’s cheeks, and her hands shook. “Ian, I should’ve made Maggie come with us the same day that Tess and I met you.”
“It’s not your fault.” I gave her a hug. “She’s a stubborn old person, set in her ways.”
At Maggie’s house, Tess and I rushed in first, in case Pestone had hung around. We checked everywhere, but found no sorcerer. Then I opened the door to Maggie’s bedroom. She was lying in bed, pale and disheveled. She’d aged dramatically since I last saw her.
“Maggie, it’s Ian. I have three people with me—Laura, Tess, and Herman.”
The old witch’s wide-open eyes gazed at the doorway. “My old boyfriend?”
I glanced back at Herman, and he nodded. There was so much about the clan’s history that I didn’t understand. Maggie knew the three behind me better than she knew me, so I motioned them forward.
The three of them chatted with Maggie for a moment while Laura sat down on the edge of the bed and took the old woman’s hand. The healer began to chant in Old Irish.
I searched the room for signs of struggle and noticed that a lamp was lying on the floor, the bulb broken. That was the only indication of a fight, other than Maggie’s condition.
A little color returned to her face, but her eyes kept darting around as though she was still scared. She answered questions hesitantly if at all.
Laura patted Maggie’s hand and stood. She walked toward the door and motioned for me to follow.
She led me out to the van. “She’s pretty confused…naturally upset. She’s lost all memories from before the fight, but she does remember Pestone standing by the side of her bed demanding her power. I can’t sense any magic—it’s all…all gone. The only glimmer of good news is that Pestone didn’t enslave her. Apparently, he had no use for a ninety-year-old woman.”
“How’s her health?” I asked.
“She seems okay. She doesn’t have physical injuries—nothing I can find. I’ll do a thorough exam when we get her back to the ranch. Help me grab the litter.”
It wasn’t heavy, so I carried it to the house. As we walked, my mind raced. How could such a powerful witch have lost a fight?
“I’d love the chance to rip Pestone’s head off his shoulders, but if she couldn’t beat him, I have no chance.”
“Keep training, and you may get strong enough. He has to pay
a price for this.”
Outside the bedroom, I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. Maggie needed my support now, not my anger.
She was still groggy, but awake. Her skin was more wrinkled than it had been a few days ago, and her eyes barely opened.
Herman and I gently lifted her onto the litter that I’d set on the bed next to her. She was wearing flannel pajamas, but to make sure she stayed warm, I tucked a comforter from the foot of her bed around her.
“How do you feel?” Laura asked Maggie in a trembling voice.
“Not so…so good,” Maggie said in a low, reedy voice. Her hands shook.
“Are you hurting anywhere?”
Maggie paused and then stared at her as if she was seeing her for the first time. “Don’t f-feel any pain. Just really tired.”
After a minute of appearing to search for something else to say, she closed her eyes.
Herman and I carried her to the van. Laura held Maggie’s hand and sat on the floor of the van beside Maggie as Herman drove us back to the ranch. Tears flowed down her cheeks the entire way.
I mentally prepared a list of questions for Tess on how we could pay Pestone back for this attack.
-o-o-o-
AT THE RANCH, TESS arranged for Maggie to receive an empty apartment, and Herman and I carried the old woman up the stairs to her new bed. Then Laura made Maggie as comfortable as possible.
A moment later, Diana strode into the bedroom. “Has she stabilized?”
“Yes,” Laura said. Her tears started again.
Diana shifted from foot to foot. “I need to talk to you three, but, first, I’d like to talk to her alone. Wait downstairs.”
I wanted to say that Maggie was trying to rest, but Laura took my hand and led me down to the living room. Tess followed us. We sat on a sofa exactly like the one in my apartment.
I blurted out, “Maggie looks terrible, but if she recovers, could her magic come back, maybe just a little?”
“Never happens,” Tess replied. “If Pestone had left a tiny bit of her magic behind, we could have rebuilt it from there, but he didn’t. She’ll never conjure a spell again.”
Laura opened her mouth to say something, but, instead, she began to moan quietly. I put an arm around her to try to comfort her.
Lone Survivor: The Sorcerers' Scourge Series: Book One Page 15